History with such commendation, it may be allowed us to do the like with some of our Nation.  Richard Bourbidge and Edward Allen, two such actors as no age must ever look to see the like; and to make their Comedies compleat, Richard Tarleton, who for the Part called the Clowns Part, never had his match, never will have.  For Writers of Playes, and such as have been players themselves, William Shakespeare and Benjamin Johnson have especially left their Names recommended to posterity.”

Richard Bourbidge (or Burbadge) was the first of the great English tragic actors, and was the original of the greater number of Shakespeare’s heroes—­Hamlet, Othello, Lear, Shylock, Macbeth, Richard III., Romeo, Brutus, etc.  Dick Tarleton, one of the privileged scapegraces of social life, was regarded by his contemporaries as the most witty of clowns and comedians.  The clown was a permitted character in the old theatres, and intruded not only between the acts, but even into the play itself, with his quips and antics.  It is probable that he played the part of clown, grave-digger, etc., in Shakespeare’s comedies, and no doubt took liberties with his parts.  It is thought that part of Hamlet’s advice to the players—­“and let those that play your clowns speak no more than is set down for them,” etc.—­was leveled at Tarleton.

The question is often asked, but I consider it an idle one, whether Shakespeare was appreciated in his own day as he is now.  That the age, was unable to separate him from itself, and see his great stature, is probable; that it enjoyed him with a sympathy to which we are strangers there is no doubt.  To us he is inexhaustible.  The more we study him, the more are we astonished at his multiform genius.  In our complex civilization, there is no development of passion, or character, or trait of human nature, no social evolution, that does not find expression somewhere in those marvelous plays; and yet it is impossible for us to enter into a full, sympathetic enjoyment of those plays unless we can in some measure recreate for ourselves the atmosphere in which they were written.  To superficial observation great geniuses come into the world at rare intervals in history, in a manner independent of what we call the progress of the race.  It may be so; but the form the genius shall take is always determined by the age in which it appears, and its expression is shaped by the environments.  Acquaintance with the Bedouin desert life of today, which has changed little for three thousand years, illumines the book of Job like an electric light.  Modern research into Hellenic and Asiatic life has given a new meaning to the Iliad and the Odyssey, and greatly enhanced our enjoyment of them.  A fair comprehension of the Divina Commedia is impossible without some knowledge of the factions that rent Florence; of the wars of Guelf and Ghibelline; of the spirit that banished Dante, and gave him an humble tomb in Ravenna instead of a sepulchre in the pantheon of